Social Media Case Study- Prose Custom Haircare
Social Media Case Study-Prose Custom Haircare
Prose is a haircare brand with an individualized approach to hair care. The company designs custom hair care products based on the brand’s online consultation quiz results. The brand focuses on its audience’s individuality and personality. They want to help their customers become the best version of themselves. The brand voice is understated and straightforward, reflecting the simplicity of their base formula that is tweaked for each customer. The consultation asks questions about the user's hair texture, length, diet, stress levels, and geographic location to account for environmental elements that may affect hair, such as UV rays, pollution, water hardness, humidity, and wind. Users may also customize their products to focus on several hair goals: volume, shine, smoothness, and curl definition. After the consultation, personalized products are created to address the identified needs and concerns. Prose products include custom shampoo, conditioner, hair oil, dry shampoo, curl cream, leave-in conditioner, hair, and scalp masks, and hair supplements. Prose is confident in its product and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee with free shipping and returns.
Prose’s social media presence is relatively weak compared to other brands. Their social media voice focuses on education and individuality. Prose’s platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, and TikTok. Despite having accounts on the most popular social media platforms, Prose does not have a solid follower base or consistent engagement. The Facebook page has less than 38,000 likes with very little engagement. The page showcases products at the top of the page, and the feed consists of links to the company blog about hair care and stylized promotional posts. The Twitter page has 1,676 followers also with very little to no engagement. The feed has few original tweets, and most tweets are links to the company blog and retweets of consumers’ tweets praising the products. The Instagram page is the brand’s most successful social media. The page uses Instagrams’ Reels video feature to create engaging content, which makes up most of the brands’ feed. Prose’s Pinterest page is one of the brands’ more unsuccessful social media. There is little content on the page, but the page boasts more than 10 million monthly views. The TikTok page is the brand’s most populated social media and has 30,100 followers. The page’s content is influencer-made videos showcasing wash-day routines and simple hairstyles.
Facebook and Instagram represent both Prose’s weak and strong social media. Facebook is one of the brand’s more inadequate platforms. The page has 37,651 likes which are relatively low for professional social media pages. The brand updates the feed with four to five posts per week, including links to the company blog articles, product photos, and influencer videos. The 2021 content received decent engagement, but the 2022 posts have not received much. Most 2022 posts get less than five likes and comments. The brand only replies to comments asking for customer service to address shipping, refunds, and product quality. The average number of post likes in 2021 was 10. The 2021 engagement rate is 2.65%. The average number of post likes in 2022 is 5. The 2022 engagement rate is 1.33%.
Instagram is one of Prose’s more successful social media platforms. The page has 224,000 followers and 1,544 posts. The account makes five posts per week. The feed consists of Instagram Reels made by influencers and stylized product videos. Unlike the Facebook page, the 2021 and 2022 content has received the same amount of average engagement. The average number of post likes in 2021 was 300. The 2021 engagement rate is 13.4%. The average number of post likes in 2022 is 400. The 2022 engagement rate is 17.9%. The increase in engagement can be attributed to Prose’s successful Instagram Reels. There are few comments on their posts, and the brand focuses its replies on the comments about the product and customer service. Besides the customer service responses, the brand rarely replies to comments. However, the replies are very general and seem insincere. The Instagram page does not feature people with tight and coily hair textures such as type 4c hair, despite offering products for them on the website. A brand’s Instagram page is the face of the brand, and people with coily hair textures are not present. This hair texture group is an entire demographic that is not adequately represented on the brand’s Instagram page or other social media pages.
Prose’s partnerships with Youtube and TikTok creators are the brand’s most successful marketing ventures. The Youtube channel has two successful series: The Cut Down, a series about hair health hosted by Faith Armstrong, the Prose Director of Education, and the Hairstyle How-Tos series of several videos showing stylish and straightforward hairstyles. Both series brought some success, but the most engagement is seen from Prose’s sponsored Youtube Shorts. The most successful Youtube Short for Prose is from the Youtube channel Reza and Puja Khan (Khan). The video was posted in 2021 and has earned 16.8 million views. This video was successful because it was short, entertaining, and shareable. TikTok has also proven successful. Prose has sponsored several TikTok creators to make engaging content using the products. The brand hashtag, #prosehair, has amassed 46.2 million views from the influencer TikTok videos. The videos were so successful because they used the trending TikTok sounds, memes, and original ideas from the creators. The content of the TikToks focused on the ease of the Prose consultation quiz and the satisfaction with the products. The videos were short, entertaining, informative, and shareable.
Prose’s social media profiles do not give the impression that the brand has a dedicated social media team or strategic communication plan. The brand is present on all popular social media platforms, but the profiles and content leave much desired. The posts are not particularly interesting, original, or shareable. The brand posts the same content on each platform. The bulk of the Facebook content consists of links to the brand’s blog articles about hair care and health. Most of the posts on the Instagram page are influencer-made Reels about their wash-day routine. There are too many people creating the same content in the same way. There needs to be more variety of posts. The brand selectively engages with comments, focusing on comments about customer service.
Prose can improve its social media by adopting a new brand message that promotes diversity, acceptance, and celebrates individuality. A dedicated social media team with a strategic communication plan can accomplish this by creating more exciting and brighter posts that take advantage of trend jacking, newsjacking, and partnering with new and enthusiastic influencers. Currently, Prose’s models and influencers do not have an extensive range of hair types and textures. Notably, the brand does not feature models with type 4 hair. Expanding the content of their spokespeople’s hair types and textures will drive the message that Prose offers products for all and has the potential to boost sales. Prose can connect with these influencers by intentionally partnering with models with type 4 hair and sending attractive PR packages that influencers may share on their pages to promote the brand. Prose may take advantage of trendjacking and newsjacking to create more interesting posts. The applicable and appropriate trends to the brand are to use the popular Instagram Reels, and TikTok sounds in its Reels. The popular sounds and trends will boost the videos’ probability of exposure in the platform’s algorithm. Instagram and TikTok are great tools for brands to gain exposure and a great place to connect with new and enthusiastic influencers who have their finger on the pulse of trends and what makes viral content. Newsjacking is another tactic to improve Prose’s social media.
The trends that would benefit the brand to jump on are to support the recent CROWN Act legislation and celebrate several relevant holidays for the brand. The CROWN Act is an acronym for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair” (Dove, n.d.). The act is “a movement to end race-based hair discrimination worldwide.” It would be advantageous for Prose to support the CROWN Act because it would set them apart from their competition as a company that is vocal about equality and is serious about championing individuality and freedom. Prose can benefit from participating in both calendar and hashtag holiday campaigns. The calendar hashtags that the brand can take advantage of are Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The brand can offer discounts or create a sweepstakes contest for contestants to develop Instagram Reels and TikToks about hair’s impact on their parental relationship. In addition, Prose can take advantage of several hashtag holidays to create campaigns to bring attention to the brand such as Black History Month, Hispanic History Month, and other ethnic appreciation months. In this generation, consumers are socially conscious and want to support brands that are vocal about celebrating and empowering people of color and marginalized communities. To commemorate the ethnic appreciation months, Prose can launch brand campaigns that highlight creators from marginalized communities and their history, not only during their respective heritage months but year-round. Continuing to support people outside of the period of their heritage months is important to set Prose apart from other brands whose support ends with the heritage month.
Prose has the potential to have a successful social media presence. It is not enough for a brand to be present on each social media platform. A brand needs to constantly update the content and monitor engagement and feedback to keep its audience’s attention. Prose needs a dedicated social media team to create a social media marketing plan, complete with metrics and KPIs, key performance indicators, to evaluate the plan’s success. Prose needs a plan to create more entertaining and shareable content that can be shared on all platforms, mainly Instagram and TikTok where its target audience is active. Instagram and TikTok are the platforms that Prose should concentrate its content on because its products require demonstration and these platforms provide an opportunity to become viral. Prose should connect with content creators and influencers that are enthusiastic, creative, and know how to make viral content. With a detailed social media marketing plan, Prose has the potential to earn a large ROI from its social media efforts.
References
Dove. (n.d.). The Official CROWN Act. Retrieved March 5, 2022, from https://www.thecrownact.com/
Khan, Reza. Khan, Puja. [Reza and Khan Puja]. (2021, Sept. 30). Living With A Female Changes A Man… [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/DF9McWgm14Q
Prose. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved March 8, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCygnyV6d3VXwJKPjIkZhvA
Prose: Custom Haircare (@prose) • Instagram photos and videos. (n.d.). Instagram. Retrieved March 13, 2022, from https://www.instagram.com/prose/
Prose (@prosehair). (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved March 13, 2022, from https://twitter.com/prosehair
Prose (@prosehair) Official TikTok | Watch Prose's Newest TikTok Videos. (n.d.). TikTok. Retrieved March 8, 2022, from https://www.tiktok.com/@prosehair?lang=en